A Research On The Relation Among University Student’s Gratitude, Irrational Beliefs And Subjective Well-being

With the rise of positive psychology, gratitude has become one of the most popular areasof psychology studies at home and abroad. Gratitude is an important manifestation of healthypersonality and the basis of the moral quality of a person. Since ancient times, gratitude haslong been praised, but ingratitude all condemned. Numerous studies show that individualswith more thanksgiving experience would more satisfy with life, have more positiveemotional experience and less negative emotional experience; Person with high tendency ofgratitude, would have a more positive attitude towards life. So, some in-depth studies ongratitude is necessary.In this study,495undergraduate students, who were from the Harbin EngineeringUniversity, Heilongjiang University and Jiamusi University, were randomly recruited assubjects. The tools of this study included the multidimensional gratitude resentment andappreciation test, the irrational beliefs scale for university and the subjective well being scale.This study aimed at studying the situation of college students’ gratitude and the relationshipamong university students’ gratitude, irrational beliefs and subjective well-being. The resultsshow that:（1）Demographic variables analysis showed that: sex, professional, and grade aredifferent in gratitude score; But Only child and non-only child, differences in birthplace andthe family economic situation do not result in university students’ gratitude scores’ significantdifferences.（2）There is a very significant correlation between college students’ gratitude,irrational beliefs and subjective well-being; Gratitude and irrational beliefs can significantlypredict subjective well-being. But the scores of college students’ gratitude and thedimensions of simple gratitude and gratitude to others respectively has very significantpositive correlation with the score of absolute desire, indicating that the gratitude maycontain a negative cognitive component.（3）College students’ irrational beliefs has played a partial mediating role betweencollege students’ gratitude and subjective well-being. college students’ gratitude can directly affect the subjective well-being, but also can indirectly influence subjective well-being byaffecting the irrational beliefs.